The operating life of a high performance digital system is, in part, a function of heating and cooling cycles of the system's components. Failure of a system's components can cripple or render the system inoperable. One such component is the system's processor, including individual processor cores of a multi-core processor. When constant and extreme thermal cycling occurs, the operating life of the system's components can be reduced as a result of physical damage to the die, packaging, or bonds of the component.
Electronic components, such as processors, that are produced in large manufacturing lots tend to exhibit differences in their internal resistance which leads to differences in the amount of current that is used per unit time for a given operating state. Due to such manufacturing variability, if there is more than one of such component in a computing device, one or a few of them are likely to have greater current usage than the others, and so are referred to herein as “higher leakage components.” Higher leakage components tend to exhibit lower performance levels compared to their lower leakage counterparts, but can achieve higher frequency/performance levels with less power or when thermally constrained. Higher leakage components also tend to run at higher temperatures than the lower leakage components due to higher internal resistance. The higher temperatures of higher leakage components may lead to reduced operating life compared to lower leakage components. Thermal cycling may change the leakage characteristics of the components overtime, and thus the differences in operating temperature and operating life may increase as the computing device ages, wears, or deteriorates. In other words, the computing device age increases with additional thermal stress beyond reliability limits.